Basic question

I started this conversation a few months ago and then I left this project for something else, but now I am back on this issue.
My very basic, initial question:
If I have:

[wp-datatable id=”table1″]
responsive: true
[/wp-datatable]

Where is “table1” supposed to exist? it should be already in the page, in the html?
That becomes a more important question if I am generating the json from a database